The Unspeakable Perk Part 5

"But I know about scarabs and I don't know about--about--"

"Girls. So one might suspect. Do you know what I'm doing, Mr. Beetle Man?"

"N-n-no."

"I'm flirting with you. I never flirted with a scientific person before.

It's awfully one-sided, difficult, uphill work."

This last was all but drowned out in his flood of panicky instructions, from which she disentangled such phrases as "first to left"--"dry river-bed-hundred-yards"--"dead tree--can't miss it."

"If you send me away now, I'll cry. Really, truly cry, this time."

"No, you won't! I mean I won't! I--I'll do anything! I'll talk! I'll make conversation! How old are you? That's what the Chinese ask. I used to have a Chinese cook, but he lost all my s.h.i.+rt studs, playing fan-tan.

Can you play fan-tan? Two can't play, though. They have funny cards in this country, like the Spanish. Have you seen a bullfight yet? Don't do it. It's dull and brutal. The bull has no more chance than--than--"

"Than an unprotected man with a conscienceless flirt, who falls on his neck and then threatens to submerge him in tears."

"Now you're beginning again!" he wailed. "What did you jump for, anyway?"

"I slipped. An awful, red-eyed, scrambly fiend scared me--a real, live, hairy devilkin on stilts. He ran at me across the rock. Was that one of your pet scarabs, Mr. Beetle Man?"

"That was a tarantula, I suppose, from the description."

"They're deadly, aren't they?"

"Of course not. Unscientific nonsense. I'll go up and chase him off."

"Flying from perils that you know not of to more familiar dangers?" she taunted.

"Well, you see, with the tarantula out of the way, there's no reason why you shouldn't--er--"

"Go, and leave you in peace? What do you think of that for gallantry, Birdie?"

The gay-feathered inquisitor had come quite near.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?" he queried, c.o.c.king his curious head.

"He says he doesn't like me one little, wee, teeny bit, and he wishes I'd go home and stay there. And so I'm going, with my poor little feelings all hurted and ruffled up like anything."

"Nothing of the sort," protested the badgered spectacle-wearer.

"Then why such unseemly haste to make my path clear?"

"I just thought that maybe you'd go back on the top of the rock, where you came from, and--and be a voice again. If you won't go, I will."

He made three jumps of it up the boulder, bearing a stick in his hand.

Presently his face, preternaturally solemn and gnomish behind the goggles, protruded over the rim. The girl was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, contemplating the scenery as if she'd never had another interest in her life. Apparently she had forgotten his very existence.

"Ahem!" he began nervously.

"Ahem!" she retorted so promptly that he almost fell off his precarious perch. "Did you ring? Number, please."

"I wish I knew whether you were laughing at me or not," he said ruefully.

"When?"

"All the time."

"I am. Your darkest suspicions are correct. Did you abolish my devilkin?"

"I drove him back into his trapdoor home and put a rock over it."

"Why didn't you destroy him?"

"Because I've appointed him guardian of the rock, with strict instructions to bite any one that ever comes there after this except you."

"Bravo! You're progressing. As soon as you're free from the blight of my regard, you become quite human. But I'll never come again."

"No, I suppose not," he said dismally. "I shan't hear you again, unless, perhaps, the echoes have kept your voice to play with."

"Oh, oh! Is this the language of science? You know I almost think I should like to come--if I could. But I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because we leave to-morrow."

"Not across to the southern coast? It isn't safe. Fever--"

"No; by Puerto del Norte."

"There's no boat."

"Yes, there is. You can just see her funnel over that white slope. It's our yacht."

"And you think you are going in her to-morrow?"

"Think? I know it."

"No," he contradicted.

"Yes," she a.s.serted, quite as concisely.

"No," he repeated. "You're mistaken."

"Don't be absurd. Why?"

"Look out there, over that tree to the horizon."